Dead Space 3 is a disturbing ride from beginning to end (review)

Dead Space 3 starts with a break up. You might think that’s weird for a game that involves meticulously cutting off the limbs of alien zombies who want to kill you. But the Dead Space series has seen more unusual changes over the last few years.

Available today for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, Visceral Game’s third entry of its sci-fi themed survival-horror franchise takes hero Isaac Clarke through a galaxy-hopping adventure as he tries to stop undead creatures known as Necromorphs once and for all. Fighting alongside him in the optional cooperative mode is John Carver, a soldier who has his own reasons for hunting down the origin of the Markers, spiraling structures that create the monsters out of corpses.

Sponsored by VB

Gaming is in its golden age, and big and small players alike are maneuvering like kings and queens in A Game of Thrones. Register now for our GamesBeat 2015 event, Oct. 12-Oct.13, where we’ll explore strategies in the new world of gaming.

Much like with Capcom’s Resident Evil games, many fans mourn the transition of Dead Space from a slow-paced and eerie tale to a heavy emphasis on action and leaning on large, scripted sequences to tell its story. So I’ll make this simple: If you didn’t enjoy this change in Dead Space 2 at all, you won’t find a lot to like in Dead Space 3. But if you’re willing to dig in, you’ll find an entertaining shooter that will scare the pants off you.

What you’ll like

Addicting loot hunt

The limb-chopping combat receives a facelift with the new workbenches, which you can use to craft your own weapons. You start by picking a compact frame (one-handed) or a heavy frame (two-handed) and choosing an upper tool and a lower tool. These tools dictate what kind of firepower you’re using. If you attach the military engine, you can create standard weapons like machine guns, revolvers, and a sniper rifle. One of my favorite combinations early on was a rivet-shooting chain gun that I placed on top of a shotgun.

Different barrel tips, a variety of attachments, and modifiers known as circuits can alter the way your gun behaves — a generic plasma cutter can become a lethal killing machine by adding a few damage circuits to its frame. Or you can add an ammo-box attachment that’ll automatically reload your gun once you reach the bottom of the clip. You have a lot of flexibility in tweaking these weapons anyway you want.

The best way to find components is through exploration. Hidden containers and secret rooms contain the rarer stuff, but Necromorphs often drop resources (which acts as a type of in-game currency) that you can use to build other tools and items. Gathering these resources and looking for the nearest workbench to put them together is like a minigame of its own, as it encourages you to keep an eye out for more loot.

Gallery: Gallery

Image Credit: Visceral Games

Dead Space 3 has a lengthy campaign — it took me close to 24 hours on my first solo playthrough — and I’m sure that at least a few of those hours came from tinkering around with the workbench. You can always recover any parts you’ve added to a gun, so it’s easy to test out your crazy weapon ideas.

If you’re impatient, you can buy more resources, space suits, and weapons through the optional microtransactions menu with real-world money. But I don’t know why anyone would even consider that. By the end, I had a huge pile of resources, and I never had to worry about running out.

An evolving threat

The Marker-corrupted creatures, many of whom we’ve seen before in Isaac’s previous quests, pack a few new skills that make sure you never really feel comfortable around them — no matter how much ammo you may have. They still love to pop out of air vents when you least expect it, with their scythe-like arms rapidly moving to greet you. But it’s their appearance on the planet of Tau Volantis, and the way they adapt to attacking you outdoors, that reminds you how deadly they can really be.

Only a small ripple of snow — as if they were swimming — will signal their presence before they suddenly emerge to attack you from the planet’s icy depths. The visibility outside isn’t always clear, especially with strong torrents of snow and sleet raining down. It’s typical to find yourself alone one second and then surrounded by Necromorphs the next. It’s unsettling.

Playing in the dark with headphones on accentuates this threat: The most dangerous Necromorphs are those you can hear but can’t see. Their guttural, animal-like roars and shrill high-pitched screams serve as a prelude to their inevitable anxiety-inducing appearance. The addition of new monsters toward the end — like the Twitcher, an extremely fast Necromorph that you have to slow down with your Stasis ability first — keeps the combat from being anything but routine.

Resolution

As we’ve learned with Mass Effect 3 and Assassin’s Creed III, it’s tricky to come up with an ending to an ambitious trilogy that’ll please everyone. The Dead Space plot isn’t convoluted, but it’s large enough to get lost in the details. To Visceral Games’ credit, it has managed to tie up many loose ends in Dead Space 3, whether through cutscenes or text and audio logs scattered throughout the levels.

I have a few issues (some being too spoilery to discuss here) with the direction it took the story in — such as the dumb romance subplot — but it was a satisfying ending. The developers do leave some room for future games or other forms of media to explore, but that’s also handled in a way that feels natural and convincing.